Featured Writers

Lauren Beukes is an award-winning, best-selling novelist , who has described herself as a “recovering journalist, TV scriptwriter, award-winning columnist and writer (aka glorified typist)”. She is the author of four books – The Shining Girls (2013), Zoo City (2011), which won the Arthur C Clarke Award, Moxyland (2008) and Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South […]

Zukiswa Wanner is the author of the novels The Madams (2006), Behind Every Successful Man (2008), Commonwealth Best Book –shortlisted and Herman Charles Bosman Award shortlisted Men of the South (2010). Her fourth novel, London Cape Town Joburg is due in April 2014. Her two children’s books, Jama Loves Bananas and Refilwe , came out in 2012.

Lara Daniels is a Nigerian born writer, who writes mostly about romance. She relocated to the United States in the nineties, where she lives with her husband and three children. A Registered Nurse by day and an avid romance author at night, Lara penned her first fiction at the age of nine. She continued her love for writing all through Secondary school, then to college. In July 2009, she published her first novel, Love in Paradise and in 2010, she published the sequel, Love at Dawn – which charted on iTunes[s UK top 100 Romance novels. When she is not writing, Lara enjoys spending quality time with her family. For more about Lara Daniels, catch up with her on her blog at www.laradanielswrites.com or on twitter @LDparables

Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese writer and playwright, currently based in Scotland. She won the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000, and is the author of three acclaimed novels, including Lyrics Alley, which won the 2011 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year and was listed for the Orange and Commonwealth Writers prizes.

Best known for her 2009 book, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, which deals with the subject of polygamy, Lola Shoneyin is is a Nigerian poet and author. A teacher by profession, Shoneyin holds a teaching degree from the London Metropolitan University. She is currently a deputy principal at an international secondary School in Abuja, Nigeria, where she also teaches English and drama.

Camara Laye, a Guinean novelist, short story writer, and essayist, was born in 1924 in the ancient city of Kouroussa, Upper Guinea. Laye’s first novel, The African Child (titled L’Enfant Noir in French) was published in 1954 and received the Priz Charles Veillon – one of France’s leading literary awards. The African Child was one of the first novels by an African writer to gain international attention, and is still regarded among the continent’s best works.

Considered by some to be Francophone Africa’s’ answer to the Chinua Achebe, the late Ivorian writer and political activist, Ahmadou Kourouma is easily one of Africa’s most celebrated authors. Born in 1927, in the Ivory Coast, Kourouma belonged to the Malinke ethnic group and was raised by an uncle. From 1950 to 1954, he served in the French army in Indochina, following which he moved to Lyon, France to study mathematics.

Born August 14, 1944, Buchi Emecheta is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her books mainly focus on women issues, particularly the theme of gender bias. Other themes include racial prejudice and the experience of immigration.

Born in 1978 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dinaw Mengestu immigrated to the United States in 1980 with his mother and sister, joining his father who had fled Ethiopia two years earlier. A hugely talented writer, Mengestu has attained significant success at a young age as a novelist and journalist. He has authored two critically acclaimed novels.